Aaron Spjut

All new technology should make animations like this. Funny stuff…

Interested to see how I created my portfolio site? Well now you can. The entire thing, .fla’s, .as’s, .html’s, .swf’s, all of it is online to be downloaded and picked apart. If you do look at it please drop me an email and let me know. Questions, concerns, critiques, opinions, ideas, hate mail or praise mail, send it all my way.

Click here to download it (6.4 MB)

All of it is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL

Here is a flash contest I heard by way of moveon.org. The theme probably isn’t for everyones but the powerbook prize is nice for all and I’m sure some funny animations will come out of it.

I’m honored to say that my portfolio site has been listed on pixelmakers.

I’m very happy to say that I started working at Adobe on Wednesday as the Template Tagger. I’m not exactly sure what details I can talk about, so for now Im not going to say much. I can say that the people I work with are great and Im looking forward to getting to know everyone. The last couple days have mainly been orientation but for a good part of today I finally got to dig into what I will be doing. A big part of my job will be working with xslt and I may start a new blog section here to talk about my learnings.

You can now access each section’s rss feed on this site. So if you want to only follow my Web Dev adventures and not my nutrition or MTB adventures just use the rss2 feed link on the right side of each section’s page.

Flash Ant was successful in their campaign to get full actionscript support in Naturaldocs.

Here is a quickie on how to get NaturalDocs to work with Xcode.

First fallow this tutorial on making Xcode your Flash IDE.

Then follow these directions to make Xcode run a shell script when building projects.

1)Download Naturaldocs.

2) Put the downloaded NaturalDocs folder in /Developer.
make sure the name of the folder is “NaturalDocs”

3)In one of your current Xcode flash project folders, create a folder called “_00Settings” and another called “_06Documentation”.

4)Open op the Xcode project.

5) Add this line to the shell script of the build target: (see this tutorial for help)

1

 /Developer/NaturalDocs/NaturalDocs -i _04Production/ -o HTML _06Documentation/ -p _00Settings/NaturalDocs

6) build the project then look in the “_06Documentation” to see your NaturalDocs spoils.

I’ve put up a list of cross country mountain bike races for Northern California and Southern Oregon. If you know of any that aren’t listed please let me know by commenting.

I wanted to help spread the word that Flash Ant is leading a great petition to get NaturalDocs support for actoinscript. Flash Ant will donate $1 for every email sent asking for actionscript to be included.

A couple weeks ago I got a horrible case of poison oak. My face was so puffy my eyes were almost swollen shut and I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I went to the doctor and was prescribed medication that wouldn’t let me sleep. So for a week I got from zero to four hours sleep each night. To keep from itching a hole in myself I built this, a New portfolio site.

Currently the Xcode setup I have for working on my flash projects forces me to save all unsaved code files before Xcode tells flash to compile everything. I wanted to have the Xcode build functionality which can automatically save files before each build.

Xcode has a nifty build process that allows you to add custom shell scripts to it.

This is how I added the save functionality: (more…)

Most of the projects I work on include many separate swf files that are loaded in at run time. This can be a pain because you have to publish multiple fla’s each time you want to test the project. BIT-101 had a helpful answer to this using JSFL. BIT-101′s solution works great if your only working on two files but I wanted something that would work on multiple files so I came up with this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

fl.outputPanel.clear();
fl.saveAll();
var currentWindow = fl.getDocumentDOM();
for(var a = 0; a < fl.documents.length; ++a){
    if(currentWindow != fl.documents[a]){
        fl.setActiveWindow(fl.documents[a]);
        fl.documents[a].publish();
    }
}
fl.setActiveWindow(currentWindow);
currentWindow.testMovie();

I ran into a problem where all the movies published were also tested all at once inside the same window. Im not sure what was going on there but making each document active before publishing it seemed to fix it.

BIT-101 bound the script to the F7 key. I added it to the JSFL script executed by hitting command-enter in Xcode as shown in the oh so helpful Xcode for flash tutorial.

Next up is to write an Xcode script that saves all unsaved actionscript files before telling flash to publish everything. But that will be for tomorrow… err… make that later today.

Finally A real IDE for Flash on OS X!!!

Pixelconsumption has a great tutorial on how to set up Xcode to work with Flash. Its got the syntax highlighting, “command enter” integration with flash to run your project and all the awesome features of Xcode.

This is an explanation of how vEngine deals with structure collisions. Structures refer to all static objects, like the ground and walls.

Warning!! This document is far from complete.
(more…)

Actionism is one of my flash projects.

My portfolio site uses Loadism and the unreleased 3Dism.

Terence Ranger uses Loadism

Tim Gallaher uses Musicism

This is the official first post. Not like the fake test recipe posts below, this is the real thing. This post means this site is in a useful state. Although the look is currently very off the shelf
WordPress defualty, both form and function will improve in time as things progress. Amazingly (or maybe not) I’ve already had to deal with spam comments. This site has been online for all of two days and the bots already found it. Just as I was about to fall into a spammer induced depression, I found many posts on the subject over at WordPress and an easy fix within a few minutes.

1 c Lentils – raw, brown
1/4 c Wheat germ
1 c Breadcrumbs – whole wheat
1/2 c Brown rice
1 Onion – small, minced
3 Eggs
1 t Thyme
1 tb Soy sauce
4 tb Tomato sauce
1 tb Olive oil
2 tb Tabasco sauce

Cover lentils with water and cook on a low boil for 1-1/2 hours or until tender. Mash lentils coarsely and combine with remaining ingredients. Pour into well greased loaf pan and bake, covered, at 350 F for 45 minutes. Remove cover and continue to cook for 15 minutes or until loaf is firm to the touch. Serve with your favourite sauce.
Servings: 6

(more…)

3 Medium Yams
3 Tablespoons Oil
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Cumin Seeds
1/2 Teaspoon Mustard Seeds
1 Teaspoon Turmeric
1 Teaspoon Ground Coriander
1/2 Teaspoon Cayenne
2 Cups Water
1 Potato
2/3 Cup Cooked Peas

Peel yams and dice as evenly as possible. Heat oil and add spices when warm. Let simmer for 2-3 minutes, then add yams and stir well to coat with oil and spices. Continue for 5-10 minutes so yam cubes are slightly crisp. Add water, lower heat and simmer. Cut up the potato into 1 inch cubes, put the cubes in a pot, cover with water and bring to low boil. Cook both the potatoes and yams for 30 minutes, occasionally stirring the yams until tender. Drain the potatoes and mash. Slowly stir the mashed potatoes into the yams until potatoes are dissolved and curry is at a gravy consistency. Add peas, heat for another 5 minutes and serve.